In an ocean of thought, bait ya line with intuition

Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty of reality.

- Albert Einstein

To make use of your minds to think conceptually is to leave the substance and attach yourselves to form...Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people.

- Huang Po

Logic doesn't apply to the real world.

- Marvin Minsky

It is a profoundly erroneous truism...that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle - they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

- Alfred North Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics.

...concepts...being thin extracts from perception, are always insufficient representatives thereof; and although they yield wide information, must never be treated after the rationalistic fashion, as if they gave a deeper quality of truth. The deeper features of reality are found only in perceptual experience. Here alone do we acquaint ourselves with continuity, or the immersion of one thing in another, here alone with self, with substance, with qualities, with activity in its various modes, with time, with cause, with change, with novelty, with tendency, with freedom. Against all such features of reality the conceptual translation, when candidly and critically followed out, can only raised its non possums, and brand them as unreal or absurd.

- William James, Some Problems of Philosophy

One mountain above another.
The superior man does not let his mind
stray from his immediate activities.
His back is at rest
and he is free from self-consciousness.
He walks about his courtyard
without noticing the people in it.

- I-Ching

This Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all. If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for eon after eon, you will never accomplish it. Enmeshed in the meritorious practices of the Three Vehicles, you will be unable to attain Enlightenment. Nevertheless, the realization of the One Mind may come after a shorter or longer period. There are those who, upon hearing this teaching, rid themselves of conceptual thought in a flash. There are others who do this after following through the Ten Beliefs, the Ten Stages, the Ten Activities, and the Ten Bestowals of Merit. Yet others accomplish it after passing through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva's Progress. But whether they transcend conceptual thought by a longer or a shorter way, the result is a state of being; there is no pious practicing and no action of realizing. That there is nothing which can be attained is not idle talk; it is the truth. Moreover, whether you accomplish your aim in a single flash of thought or after going through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva's Progress, the achievement will be the same; for this state of being admits of no degrees, so the latter method merely entails eons of unnecessary suffering and toil.

This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels, and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance....Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. You should not start reasoning from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma. Do not keep them nor abandon them nor dwell in them nor cleave to them.

The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind, Translated by John Blofeld, First Shambhala Edition, 1994

ascend

April 27th, 1996